


colling ave

by paildramon



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Hospitalization, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Recovery, Self-Harm, Song fic, Suicidal Thoughts, don't know what else to tag haha, no actual death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 06:22:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20484311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paildramon/pseuds/paildramon
Summary: 3 more weeks2 more days1 more chance to make me stay hereI’ve been up and down that avenueYou'll never see my point of view





	1. pretending

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I've been debating posting for a long time. I wrote this all in a sleep-deprived daze back in December 2018, and didn't touch it again until today. It was too raw and real for me. When I finally felt like I could revisit it, I had an impulse to post it. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe it's not.  
Based off of Shinigami's song, colling ave. I thought that this song fit Ken perfectly.

** _We could go to sleep_ **

** _Put it all to rest_ **

** _Laying your head down onto my chest_ **

** _This where it ends_ **

** _It's hard to pretend_ **

** _That everything will just be fine in the morning_ **

* * *

Ken doesn’t remember a time when he felt okay.

Maybe it was last year, at the Chosen reunion, while Daisuke was bragging about Ken’s accomplishments. Maybe it was five years ago, when MaloMyotismon was defeated. Maybe it was never. Not even in Ken’s fondest moments did he feel okay. His and Daisuke’s first kiss was full of heart-racing fear, because  _ what if someone found out, and what if this ruins our friendship, and oh god I’m in love. _ A shame it’s possible to be in love and happy and not be okay at the same time. 

His boyfriend is probably the only thing that keeps him sane, he thinks. At the present moment, Daisuke’s head is resting on his chest and Ken’s hand is frozen stroking his boyfriend’s hair and Ken should be asleep, but he isn’t. His brain is ceaselessly running around in circles per usual. 

Ken likes to imagine that in the morning, his brain will suddenly be in working condition, that this invisible weight will be lifted. That he won’t be a burden to everyone in his life anymore. That his past will be erased. That he will be nonexistent. That’s all he could ever want. To not exist anymore, so he wouldn’t have to constantly think of the… solution to all of his problems. 

Daisuke tells him he shouldn’t think that way. 


	2. siren

**Left my tears on the nightstand**

**Eyes wide open**

**Sirens in the distance**

**Digital world left me**

**Feeling fucking distant**

**I came back feeling like I'm nonexistent**

* * *

He took a walk in the Digital World at the break of dawn. He couldn’t sleep. He was supposed to be thinking everything over, but the truth is, he hasn’t thought much at all recently. At 3am while Daisuke was asleep, he visited Osamu’s grave. No flowers. Ken saw too many flowers after his brother died. He can’t bear bouquets anymore.

Numbly, Ken steps back into their bedroom after his visit to the Digital World. The bed is empty, Ken realizes with a jolt, until he sees that Daisuke has added a note onto Ken’s on the nightstand: the one where he notified Daisuke he was going to take a walk. 

_ I’ve gone to the store. Hope u had a nice walk in the Digital World. Next time bring Wormmon for protection :) I love you so much, get some more rest! _

_ _ And then there’s at least twenty heart symbols scrawled across the bottom of the page. Something lurches in his chest. Something tugging at him to stay.

Ken’s phone buzzes relentlessly in his pocket. He opens his phone to see a myriad of texts from Daisuke and friends. Most are worried messages. Ken hasn’t mustered up the energy to respond to any in more than a week. Nevertheless, he begins to read his boyfriend’s message. 

_ Daisuke: i kno u don’t check ur phone a lot. but i left a note for u on the nightstand. caught in line at the store. love you kenny man <3 _

_ _ Ken swipes up and readies his thumbs on the keyboard. His fingers hover there, ready to type something like  _ i’m not okay, come home, help me.  _ But he can’t move. 

A siren sounds in the distance, jolting Ken from his thoughts. Immediately he closes and pockets his phone. What was he thinking? He can’t worry Daisuke like that. Ken shakes his head and lays down to rest, like Daisuke wanted him to. 

Again, he can’t sleep. His body is exhausted, but his brain is everything but. Another siren in the distance prompts his brain to spiral down into a dark train of thought.  _ Will Daisuke call 911 when he finds me? Will the sirens echo in his head like this? _ Ken’s stomach lurches and he suddenly has the urge to vomit. Why is it that he is so fearful of death yet so welcome of it at the same time?

He lays there in bed until he doesn’t feel real anymore. 


	3. evasion

**Feel like my mind is changing**

**Fading away from the high I was chasing**

**Looking at the problems I'm evading**

**Think I'll die inside this room instead of forever decaying**

* * *

Ken is no longer afraid of death.

His mind changed so fast. Still, he sometimes lingers on that fear when he feels Daisuke’s lips on his, but it’s set in stone. He’s slowly dying, anyway. His body is slowly deteriorating. He’s surprised when he wakes up alive each morning, Daisuke a warmth in his side. His phone vibrates with messages from people he no longer has the energy to care about. He lets Daisuke do the talking. 

“ _ Sorry, Miyako; Ken’s really sick at the moment. Maybe next week? _ ”

“ _ Takeru! Yeah, Ken’s fine, why do you ask? Oh… well, he  _ has  _ been kinda sick lately… He’s taking a rest from everything. Yeah. Thanks for checking in. _ ”

Ken does feel guilty, deep down, instilled into his bones like the exhaustion that grips his entire body. There are people who care about him, and yet here he is, not doing a thing.

Soon, they’ll realize how much better their lives are without Ken in it.


	4. ghoul

**Why is it so hard to kick these habits**

**Why am I melodramatic**

**Better off left in the past tense**

**I'll make like a ghoul and vanish**

* * *

Ken was fourteen and fifteen when he couldn’t stop self-harming. It was right after he snapped out of being the Digimon Kaiser. He inflicted so much pain on so many innocent Digimon, so what’s a little more blood on already-bloodied hands?

Ken feels fourteen right now. Like he’s crying in Daisuke’s arms again and Daisuke’s tears are dampening his hair as they both shake with tears because Ken is fucking stupid and can’t stop doing the stupidest things. Well, Ken feels about ready to do that stupid thing again. And he won’t have to see his boyfriend cry because he won’t know. 

Tears prick at Ken’s eyes. The ones that have been building up for weeks. He hasn’t let them fall. He wants to keep himself numb. But even that could tip someone off. Last week, Daisuke started to notice something off about Ken when Ken was blankly staring at himself in the mirror.

“...Ken?” Daisuke said, and Ken hated the way he seemed almost scared of him.

“Hmm?” Ken replied, in the midst of staring at his skinny frame and despairing about how he looks like a corpse, a ghoul, already. 

Daisuke took a deep breath and paused. Ken alerted to this right away: Daisuke  _ never  _ thinks before he speaks. Ken snapped himself out of it to pay attention to what his boyfriend was about to say. 

“You’ve been acting strange lately,” Daisuke began. 

Ken internally groaned. _ Here comes the talk again. _

_ _ “And I just want to look out for you. And I love you. You know I love you, right? And I’d do anything for you. Please, Ken, look me in the eye.”

And he did. And he saw how upset Daisuke was. And it shocked him.

“You can’t tell me nothing’s going on. I know you. And I’ll be looking out for you. I won’t let anything happen to you, understand?” Daisuke says heatedly, stepping closer to Ken to press a finger up against his heart. “I can feel it beating inside me. You can feel me too, I know it. And something doesn’t feel quite the same on your end.”

Ken lowers Daisuke’s hand off his chest and holds it. “I know you’re concerned. And you know something’s off with me lately. There is. But I’ll bounce back, like before.”

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” Daisuke pleaded.

Ken shook his head and flicked his hand like it wasn’t a big deal. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it…  _ don’t worry about it _ ?! Ken, you’re my  _ boyfriend _ , my boyfriend who happens to have cut himself in the past and be incredibly depressed and how the hell do you expect me not to worry?!”

“This isn’t four years ago.” That was a lie. It kind of was.

“You sure act like it is. You barely talk to me, and not at all to our friends. You haven’t been eating as much, and sleeping more. You take random walks in the Digital World, no doubt to mope about the past. You obsessively clean our room. You seem distant, not to mention the fact that I literally  _ just  _ caught you staring blankly at yourself in the mirror. So yeah, I have the right to be concerned.”

Ken’s eyes widen, surprised that his boyfriend had noticed all that. Especially the cleaning their room part. He’d been gathering all his things, trying to decide what he would give to whom when he was gone.

“Yeah. I’m not… completely okay,” Ken relented.

“So tell me what I can do to help.”

Ken didn’t know what to say. So he settled with, “Just be here to listen. That’s enough.”

“Only if you’re here to talk.”

And he’s tried since that interaction. To dip his toes into the shallow end, tell Daisuke the less-grim shit on his mind. It usually consists of Ken hating his own guts for what he did as the Digimon Kaiser, and Daisuke reminding him that he was being used. Controlled by the Dark Spore. Ken still doesn’t completely buy that. To do all the shit he did, there has to be some kind of deep evil inside him. After a third conversation like this, he got up, went to the bathroom, and slashed his arm. He came out again, sleeves pulled down, and no one suspected a thing. Life carried on as normal. He made dinner for Daisuke and the Digimon. Daisuke came home from classes and kissed Ken like everything was okay. And they had dinner as a family, and all the while, Ken’s arm stung underneath the cotton of his sleeve.

And now a razor hovers dangerously close to Ken’s throat. With how much his hands are shaking, he’s surprised he hasn’t nicked himself yet. With a sigh, he sets it down on the counter. He can’t do this. Not before saying goodbye.

At least soon, he thinks, he’ll be in the past tense. 


	5. deadline

**3 more weeks**

**2 more days**

**1 more chance to make me stay here**

**I’ve been up and down that avenue**

**You'll never see my point of view**

* * *

Ken had given himself somewhat of a deadline. If he didn’t do it by the seventh anniversary of Osamu’s death, he’d do it on the day. He wakes up in the morning in a daze, feeling inexplicably calm after feeling nervous about it for the past few weeks. Maybe it’s the relief that it’s all going to be over.

It’s almost as if Daisuke knows, because he skips classes that day to hang out with Ken. Ken tries to feign sick but it isn’t convincing enough for his boyfriend. So Ken spends the last day of his life out on the town with Daisuke. They buy clothes Ken knows he’ll never wear. They grab lunch at Ken’s favorite restaurant, and he’s satisfied knowing that it’s his last meal.

Even though Daisuke threw his plan off, Ken readjusts. He’d ask Daisuke to go out again to pick up Ken’s prescription. He’d lay his notes out in a neat line on their bedsheets. He’d go into the bathroom and grab his --

Ken’s thoughts are interrupted by Daisuke kneeling down. At first, he’s confused, but then he spots something small and black and square in his boyfriend’s hand.

Oh.

No.

“Ken…” Daisuke begins. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I know we’re still in school. And I have school all the time because I’m always behind. But I know we have a life together ahead of us. We’ll have kids. Human ones, not just the Digimon. We’ll have a house with a picket fence and a dog. I keep imagining the perfect future, and it’s always with you. We’ve been through so much together, and we are --  _ literally  _ \-- soulmates. I love you unconditionally, and I know you feel the same. Marry me?” Daisuke pulls the box open, revealing two identical, shimmering gold bands with etchings of beating hearts connected with a string.

They’re perfect, everything’s perfect, and  _ this is not the way today was supposed to go. _

Everyone in the restaurant is watching them with bated breath. Daisuke looks up at Ken expectantly, waiting for him to breathe  _ yes _ , and kiss him like nothing’s wrong. But he can’t.

Daisuke’s brows furrow in concern. “Ken? Is something wrong?”

Something is, indeed, wrong. He can’t breathe because he loves his boyfriend  _ so much _ , but he was supposed to  _ die _ today, not get engaged.

Ken must have been nonverbal for a long time because next thing he knows, he’s being led to the car. “ _ Tell me something _ , goddammit,” Daisuke demands. “You don’t love me anymore, that’s it, right? That’s why you’ve been acting so strange the past few days? Why you’ve been avoiding me?”

Ken sputters. “Wha-What? No, no that’s not it at all! I love you! I love you, I love you,” he repeats, over and over, like a promise. His hand rests on the door handle in case he has to open the door to throw up in the parking lot. The last thing he wants to do is puke in Daisuke’s newish car he worked so hard for.

“Then what the hell is it?” Daisuke says, exasperated. “I don’t understand!”

“I’m supposed to die today.” It slips out of Ken’s mouth. It’s like the aftermath of a fucking gunshot. There’s the shock, and the complete, deafening silence afterwards.

“...... What?”

Ken struggles to breathe, angry tears pooling in his eyes. Why did Daisuke have to choose  _ today _ , of all days, to propose? Why does the universe hate him so much? “I was supposed to die today,” he says again, like a broken record.

“...What do you mean? Do you have, like, an illness I don’t know about? What are you hiding from me? Why?” Daisuke is starting to tear up too, knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, even though they aren’t going anywhere.

“No, I just…”

“You were going to kill yourself?”

Ken’s silence is an answer enough for Daisuke, it seems, because after a moment, he shifts the car into drive.

“What are you doing?” Ken chokes out.

When Daisuke speaks, his voice has a new kind of softness to it. “Taking you to the hospital.”

Ken opens his mouth to protest, but closes it again because he knows it’s no use. Nothing he could ever say could get him out of this. His heart aches as Daisuke drives, and he’s so  _ incredibly furious _ at himself for letting this happen. So furious that he feels a fiery ache in his arms. 

As they pull into the hospital parking lot, Ken breaks the silence. “The answer is yes, by the way.”

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the longest time, I was trying to formulate one more chapter, until I realized that this end leaves it where it needs to be.


End file.
